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Pantheon, Rome
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The Pantheon (Latin Pantheon from Greek Πάνθειον Pantheon, meaning "Temple of all the gods")
is a building in Rome which was originally built as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and
rebuilt circa 125 AD during Hadrian's reign. The intended degree of inclusiveness of this dedication
is debated. The generic term pantheon is now applied to a monument in which illustrious dead are
buried. It is the best preserved of all Roman buildings, and perhaps the best preserved building of its
age in the world. It has been in continuous use throughout its history. The design of the extant
building is sometimes credited to the Trajan's architect Apollodorus of Damascus, but it is equally
likely that the building and the design should be credited to the emperor Hadrian or his architects.
Since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Catholic church. The Pantheon is currently
the oldest standing domed structure in Rome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the
interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres (142 ft).
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History
The interior of the Pantheon in the 18th century, painted by Giovanni
Paolo Panini. For another painting (1735) by the same artist, see at
the Liechenstein Museum in Vienna.
In the aftermath of the Battle of Actium (31 BC), Agrippa built and dedicated the original Pantheon
during his third consulship (27 BC). Agrippa's Pantheon was destroyed along with other buildings
in a huge fire in 80 AD. The current building dates from about 125 AD, during the reign of the
Emperor Hadrian, as date-stamps on the bricks reveal. It was totally reconstructed with the text of
the original inscription ("M·AGRIPPA·L·F·COS·TERTIVM·FECIT", standing for Marcus Agrippa,
Lucii filius, consul tertium fecit meaning, "'Made by Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, consul for the
third time") which was added to the new facade, a common practice in Hadrian's rebuilding projects
all over Rome. Hadrian was a cosmopolitan emperor who travelled widely in the East and was a
great admirer of Greek culture. He might have intended the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods, to be
a kind of ecumenical or syncretist gesture to the subjects of the Roman Empire who did not worship
the old gods of Rome, or who (as was increasingly the case) worshipped them under other names.
How the building was actually used is not known.
The coffers for the concrete dome were poured in molds, probably on
the temporary scaffolding; the oculus admits the only light.
Cassius Dio, a Graeco-Roman senator, consul and author of a comprehensive History of Rome,
writing approximately 75 years after the Pantheon's reconstruction, mistakenly attributed the domed
building to Agrippa rather than Hadrian. Dio's book appears to be the only near-contemporary
writing on the Pantheon, and it is interesting that even by the year 200 there was uncertainty about
the origin of the building and its purpose:
Agrippa finished the construction of the building called the Pantheon. It has this name, perhaps because it
received among the images which decorated it the statues of many gods, including Mars and Venus; but my
own opinion of the name is that, because of its vaulted roof, it resembles the heavens. (Cassius Dio History
of Rome 53.27.2)
The building was repaired by Septimius Severus and Caracalla in 202 AD, for which there is
another, smaller inscription. This inscription reads "pantheum vetustate corruptum cum omni cultu
restituerunt" ('with every refinement they restored the Pantheon worn by age').
Medieval
Under the portico, sometimes called by the Greek term pronaos, of
the Pantheon. The Corinthian order of the Pantheon's portico provided
a standard for Renaissance and later architects.
In 609 the Byzantine emperor Phocas gave the building to Pope Boniface IV, who converted it into
a Christian church and consecrated it to Santa Maria ad Martyres, now known as Santa Maria dei
Martiri.
The building's consecration as a church saved it from the abandonment, destruction, and the worst
of the spoliation which befell the majority of ancient Rome's buildings during the early medieval
period. Paul the Deacon records the spoliation of the building by the Emperor Constans II, who
visited Rome in July 663:
Remaining at Rome twelve days he pulled down everything that in ancient times had been made of metal for
the ornament of the city, to such an extent that he even stripped off the roof of the church [of the blessed
Mary] which at one time was called the Pantheon, and had been founded in honor of all the gods and was
now by the consent of the former rulers the place of all the martyrs; and he took away from there the bronze
tiles and sent them with all the other ornaments to Constantinople.
Tomb of Umberto I
Much fine external marble has been removed over the centuries, and there are capitals from some of
the pilasters in the British Museum. Two columns were swallowed up in the medieval buildings that
abbutted the Pantheon on the east and were lost. In the early seventeenth century, Urban VIII
Barberini tore away the bronze ceiling of the portico, and replaced the medieval campanile with the
famous twin towers built by Maderno, which were not removed until the late nineteenth century.
The only other loss has been the external sculptures, which adorned the pediment above Agrippa's
inscription. The marble interior and the great bronze doors have survived, although both have been
extensively restored.
Renaissance
Floor plan of the Pantheon from Georg Dehio/Gustav von Bezold:
Kirchliche Baukunst des Abendlandes. Stuttgart: Verlag der
Cotta'schen Buchhandlung 1887-1901.
Since the Renaissance the Pantheon has been used as a tomb. Among those buried there are the
painters Raphael and Annibale Carracci, the composer Arcangelo Corelli, and the architect
Baldassare Peruzzi. In the 15th century, the Pantheon was adorned with paintings: the best-known is
the Annunciation by Melozzo da Forlì. Architects, like Brunelleschi, who used the Pantheon as help
when designing the Cathedral of Florence's dome, looked to the Pantheon as inspiration for their
works.
Pope Urban VIII (1623 to 1644) ordered the bronze ceiling of the Pantheon's portico melted down.
Most of the bronze was used to make bombards for the fortification of Castel Sant'Angelo, with the
remaining amount used by the Apostolic Camera for various other works. It is also said that the
bronze was used by Bernini in creating his famous baldachin above the high altar of St. Peter's
Basilica, but according to at least one expert, the Pope's accounts state that about 90% of the bronze
was used for the cannon, and that the bronze for the baldachin came from Venice. This led the
Roman satirical figure Pasquino to issue the famous proverb: Quod non fecerunt barbari, fecerunt
Barberini ("What the barbarians did not do, the Barberinis [Urban VIII's family name] did").
In 1747, the broad frieze below the dome with its false windows was “restored,” but bore little
resemblance to the original. In the early decades of the twentieth century, a piece of the original, as
could be reconstructed from Renaissance drawings and paintings, was recreated in one of the
panels.
Modern
Also buried there are two kings of Italy: Vittorio Emanuele II and Umberto I, as well as Umberto's
Queen, Margherita. Although Italy has been a republic since 1946, volunteer members of Italian
monarchist organisations maintain a vigil over the royal tombs in the Pantheon. This has aroused
protests from time to time from republicans, but the Catholic authorities allow the practice to
continue, although the Italian Ministry of Cultural Heritage is in charge of the security and
maintenance.
The Pantheon is still a church and masses are still celebrated in the church, particularly on
important Catholic days of obligation, and for weddings.
Structure
Antoine Desgodetz' elevation of the Pantheon in Les edifices antiques
de Rome, Paris, 1779. These engravings, and others like them, served
designers who never travelled to Rome.
The building is circular with a portico of three ranks of huge granite Corinthian columns (eight in
the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment opening into the rotunda, under a
coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus), the Great Eye, open to the sky. A
rectangular structure links the portico with the rotunda. Though often still drawn as a free-standing
building, there was a building at its rear into which it abutted; of this building there are only
archaeological remains.
In the walls at the back of the portico were niches, probably for statues of Caesar, Augustus and
Agrippa, or for the Capitoline Triad, or another set of gods. The large bronze doors to the cella,
once plated with gold, still remain but the gold has long since vanished. The pediment was
decorated with a sculpture — holes may still be seen where the clamps which held the sculpture in
place were fixed.
South east view of the Pantheon from Piazza della Minerva, 2006.
The 4,535 metric ton (5,000 tn) weight of the concrete dome is concentrated on a ring of voussoirs
9.1 metres (30 ft) in diameter which form the oculus while the downward thrust of the dome is
carried by eight barrel vaults in the 6.4 metre (21 ft) thick drum wall into eight piers. The thickness
of the dome varies from 6.4 metres (21 ft) at the base of the dome to 1.2 metres (4 ft) around the
oculus. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres
(142 ft), so the whole interior would fit exactly within a cube (alternatively, the interior could house
a sphere 43.3 metres (142 ft) in diameter). The Pantheon holds the record for the largest
unreinforced concrete dome. The interior of the roof was possibly intended to symbolize the arched
vault of the heavens. The Great Eye at the dome's apex is the source of all light. The oculus also
serves as a cooling and ventilation method. During storms, a drainage system below the floor
handles the rain that falls through the oculus.
The interior features sunken panels (coffers), which, in antiquity, may have contained bronze stars,
rosettes, or other ornaments. This coffering was not only decorative, but also reduced the weight of
the roof, as did the elimination of the apex by means of the Great Eye. The top of the rotunda wall
features a series of brick-relieving arches, visible on the outside and built into the mass of the
brickwork. The Pantheon is full of such devices — for example, there are relieving arches over the
recesses inside — but all these arches were hidden by marble facing on the interior and possibly by
stone revetment or stucco on the exterior. Some changes have been made in the interior decoration.
The interior of the Pantheon.
It is known from Roman sources that their concrete is made up of a pasty hydrate of lime, with
pozzolanic ash (Latin pulvis puteolanum) and lightweight pumice from a nearby volcano, and fistsized pieces of rock. In this, it is very similar to modern concrete. No tensile test results are
available on the concrete used in the Pantheon; however Cowan discussed tests on ancient concrete
from Roman ruins in Libya which gave a compressive strength of 2.8 ksi (20 MPa). An empirical
relationship gives a tensile strength of 213 psi (1.5 MPa) for this specimen. Finite element analysis
of the structure by Mark and Hutchison found a maximum tensile stress of only 18.5 psi (0.13 MPa)
at the point where the dome joins the raised outer wall. The stresses in the dome were found to be
substantially reduced by the use of successively less dense concrete in higher layers of the dome.
Mark and Hutchison estimated that if normal weight concrete had been used throughout the stresses
in the arch would have been some 80% higher.
As the best-preserved example of an Ancient Roman monumental building, the Pantheon has been
enormously influential in Western Architecture from at least the Renaissance on; starting with
Brunelleschi's 42-meter dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, completed in 1436 – the first
sizeable dome to be constructed in Western Europe since Late Antiquity. The style of the Pantheon
can be detected in many buildings of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; numerous city halls,
universities and public libraries echo its portico-and-dome structure. Examples of notable buildings
influenced by the Pantheon include: the Panthéon in Paris, the Temple in Dartrey, the British
Museum Reading Room, Manchester Central Library, Thomas Jefferson's Rotunda at the University
of Virginia, the Rotunda of Mosta, in Malta, Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, New
York, the domed Marble Hall of Sanssouci palace in Potsdam, Germany, the State Library of
Victoria, and the Supreme Court Library of Victoria, both in Melbourne, Australia, the 52-metertall Ottokár Prohászka Memorial Church in Székesfehérvár, Hungary, Holy Trinity Church in
Karlskrona by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Sweden, as well as the California State Capitol in
Sacramento.
Decoration while a Christian church
Tomb of Raphael
The present high altar and the apse were commissioned by Pope Clement XI (1700-1721) and
designed by Alessandro Specchi. In the apse, a copy of a Byzantine icon of the Madonna is
enshrined. The original, now in the Chapel of the Canons in the Vatican, has been dated to the 13th
century, although tradition claims that it is much older. The choir was added in 1840, and was
designed by Luigi Poletti.
The first niche to the right of the entrance holds a Madonna of the Girdle and St Nicholas of Bari
(1686) painted by an unknown artist. The first chapel on the right, the Chapel of the Annunciation,
has a fresco of the Annunication attributed to Melozzo da Forli. On the left side is a canvas by
Clement Maioli of St Lawrence and St Agnes (1645-1650). On the right wall is the Incredulity of St
Thomas (1633) by Pietro Paolo Bonzi.
The second niche has a 15th century fresco of the Tuscan school, depicting the Coronation of the
Virgin. In the second chapel is the tomb of King Victor Emmanuel II (died 1878). It was originally
dedicated to the Holy Spirit. A competition was held to decide which architect should be given the
honor of designing it. Giuseppe Sacconi participated, but lost — he would later design the tomb of
Umberto I in the opposite chapel. Manfredio Manfredi won the competition, and started work in
1885. The tomb consists of a large bronze plaque surmounted by a Roman eagle and the arms of the
house of Savoy. The golden lamp above the tomb burns in honor of Victor Emmanuel III, who died
in exile in 1947.
The third niche has a sculpture by Il Lorenzone of St Anne and the Blessed Virgin. In the third
chapel is a 15th-century painting of the Umbrian school, The Madonna of Mercy between St Francis
and St John the Baptist. It is also known as the Madonna of the Railing, because it originally hung
in the niche on the left-hand side of the portico, where it was protected by a railing. It was moved to
the Chapel of the Annunciation, and then to its present position some time after 1837. The bronze
epigram commemorated Pope Clement XI's restoration of the sanctuary. On the right wall is the
canvas Emperor Phocas presenting the Pantheon to Pope Boniface IV (1750) by an unknown.
There are three memorial plaques in the floor, one conmmemorating a Gismonda written in the
vernacular. The final niche on the right side has a statue of St. Anastasio (1725) by Bernardino
Cametti.
Bust of the painter Raphael, above his tomb in the Pantheon
On the first niche to the left of the entrance is an Assumption (1638) by Andrea Camassei. The first
chapel on the left, is the Chapel of St Joseph in the Holy Land, and is the chapel of the
Confraternity of the Virtuosi at the Pantheon. This refers to the confraternity of artists and
musicians that was formed here by a 16th-century Canon of the church, Desiderio da Segni, to
ensure that worship was maintained in the chapel. The first members were, among others, Antonio
da Sangallo the younger, Jacopo Meneghino, Giovanni Mangone, Zuccari, Domenico Beccafumi
and Flaminio Vacca. The confraternity continued to draw members from the elite of Rome's artists
and architects, and among later members we find Bernini, Cortona, Algardi and many others. The
institution still exists, and is now called the Academia Ponteficia di Belle Arti (The Pontifical
Academy of Fine Arts), based in the palace of the Cancelleria. The altar in the chapel is covered
with false marble. On the altar is a statue of St Joseph and the Holy Child by Vincenzo de Rossi. To
the sides are paintings (1661) by Francesco Cozza, one of the Virtuosi: Adoration of the Shepherds
on left side and Adoration of the Magi on right. The stucco relief on the left, Dream of St Joseph is
by Paolo Benaglia, and the one on the right, Rest during the flight from Egypt is by Carlo Monaldi.
On the vault are several 17th-century canvases, from left to right: Cumean Sibyl by Ludovico
Gimignani; Moses by Francesco Rosa; Eternal Father by Giovanni Peruzzini; David by Luigi Garzi
and finally Eritrean Sibyl by Giovanni Andrea Carlone.
The second niche has a statue of St Agnes, by Vincenco Felici. The bust on the left is a portrait of
Baldassare Peruzzi, derived from a plaster portrait by Giovanni Duprè. The tomb of King Umberto I
and his wife Margherita di Savoia is in the next chapel. The chapel was originally dedicated to St
Michael the Archangel, and then to St. Thomas the Apostle. The present design is by Giuseppe
Sacconi, completed after his death by his pupil Guido Cirilli. The tomb consists of a slab of
alabaster mounted in gilded bronze. The frieze has allegorical representations of Generosity, by
Eugenio Maccagnani, and Munificence, by Arnaldo Zocchi. The royal tombs are maintained by the
National Institute of Honour Guards to the Royal Tombs, founded in 1878. They also organize
picket guards at the tombs. The altar with the royal arms is by Cirilli.
The third niche holds the mortal remains — his Ossa et cineres, "Bones and ashes", as the
inscription on the sarcophagus says — of the great artist Raphael. His fiancée, Maria Bibbiena is
buried to the right of his sarcophagus; she died before they could marry. The sarcophagus was given
by Pope Gregory XVI, and its insription reads ILLE HIC EST RAPHAEL TIMUIT QUO SOSPITE
VINCI / RERUM MAGNA PARENS ET MORIENTE MORI, meaning "Here lies Raphael, by
whom the mother of all things (Nature) feared to be overcome while he was living, and while he
was dying, herself to die". The epigraph was written by Pietro Bembo. The present arrangement is
from 1811, designed by Antonio Munoz. The bust of Raphael (1833) is by Giuseppe Fabris. The
two plaques commemorate Maria Bibbiena and Annibale Carracci. Behind the tomb is the statue
known as the Madonna del Sasso (Madonna of the Rock) so named because she rests one foot on a
boulder. It was commissioned by Raphael and made by Lorenzetto in 1524.
In the Chapel of the Crucifixion, the Roman brick wall is visible in the niches. The wooden crucifix
on the altar is from the 15th century. On the left wall is a Descent of the Holy Ghost (1790) by
Pietro Labruzi. On the right side is the low relief Cardinal Consalvi presents to Pope Pius VII the
five provinces restored to the Holy See (1824) made by the Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen. The
bust is a portrait of Cardinal Agostino Rivarola. The final niche on this side has a statue of St.
Rasius (S. Erasio) (1727) by Francesco Moderati.